The dark coated unicorn sat behind his desk in a stylishly decorated, yet simplistic office. Behind him, the backdrop of Fillydelphia’s skyline completed the look of the room as it spread across his panoramic windows.
The sun, setting behind him, cast his office in an orange glow creating a glare that was starting to annoy him. His mood was fair enough but the sun was only accentuating the stress of the day. He pressed a button on his desk which dimmed the windows to a tolerable level. This only served to remind him that the day was at an end. It was finally time to address them.
“Dahlia,” he said, pressing his hoof on the intercom.
“Yes, Director?” a cool female voice replied.
“Send them in.”
The director placed the files in his desk’s drawer and waited for a group of six ponies to enter his office. Stepping in, they stood side by side facing him quietly and respectfully. Three mares and three stallions, three unicorns and three pegasi. He had hoof-picked them, he had trained them. And now they were finally ready for the most important task that befell his agency. He surveyed them with a sense of conceited pride. They were his most valuable assets, his crowning achievement. He let them stand there for just a few more moments as he gathered his thoughts before finally addressing them.
“You all know your charges. You have studied them, you have immersed yourself in them and now they are your responsibility.” He regarded them all once more, smiling for a moment before continuing. “Each and every one of you has demonstrated your prowess, your physical and mental abilities and your initiative as my most elite agents. My Protectors.”
The ponies continued to stand quietly in there spots as the director now focused his attention on a single and attractive unicorn mare. She had a bright yellow coat, a white mane with a single streak dyed grey and her long tale was tied in a fashionable knot, leaving the end to curl down. Her cutiemark bore the iconic image of the smiling and frowning drama masks. Firefly was a brilliant manipulator and an astounding undercover agent, not to mention her combat abilities. She was the crowning jewel of all six of them.
“Agent Firefly,” he began. “Your charge is of the utmost importance. I don’t like placing Twilight Sparkle above the other five but she is now a princess and, as such, requires a more astute Protector. We have every confidence that you realize the heavy burden we have placed upon you and will protect your charge with your life.” The ponies around her gazed at her with appraisal as she nodded appreciatively at the director.
“I believe it has been mentioned before but I will say it again,” the director continued, his focus now on everypony in general. “Nopony, not a single soul, can know of who you are and what you do. Especially your charges. They will continue their lives in complete ignorance of your existence. Should the day come where it is utterly necessary to expose yourself, then it is to be done with discretion and deception. Should you ever become captured or interrogated, it is at this agency's liberty to disavow any knowledge of you. But of course, this goes without saying.”
The director stood up and surveyed them one last time before nodding with finality. The six ponies exited his office as quietly as they entered, the door shutting automatically behind them. He waited for a few moments before walking over to his filing cabinet and extracting a small folder labelled ‘classified’ and setting it on his desk.
“Dahlia, we did well today,” he said, placing his hoof on the intercom once more. “Take the rest of the night off.”
“Yes sir. Have a good evening, sir,” Dahlia replied.
His smile quickly faded into a pained grimace as his attention focused back on the file. Slowly, he sat back down at his desk and opened up his drawer. He winced at the site of an ancient codex stored neatly inside it. It had always sent chills down his spine whenever he recalled its dark and for foreboding contents. Slowly he placed his hoof on the old tome and brushed it against the book's hard and ornate cover before he pulled it out and placed it on his desk next to the file. Pushing the file aside, he hesitantly opened up the codex to a page he had earmarked once before.
His grimace now turned into a frown as he read the contents of the page, then reading it again and again, evaluating every sentence carefully. Finally, he reached over to the file and pulled out a single document. He looked back and forth between the page in the codex and the piece of paper in his hooves and sighed with resigned dread.
Placing the piece of paper down on the table and standing back up, he turned and walked towards his window and the view of Fillydelphia. He stood there and contemplated what he had just worked out in his mind. The gravity of which scared him for the first time in ages. For now it had felt real, no longer a simple fairy tale turned horror story. This document and the codex had confirmed something that, if made public, would shake the very foundations of all that was believed to be true of ponykind and the monarchy. The director shuddered at the thought that what everypony grew up believing was nothing but the greatest lie that was ever told.